A Q&A with Dr. Ed Theriot, professor, diatom wrangler and director of the Texas Natural Science Center. You must have JavaScript enabled and the Flash 8 plugin installed to view this content. Consult your browser’s help file for instructions to enable JavaScript. Why should people visit the Texas Memorial Museum? Whether they like dinosaurs and… » Continue Reading
Troubled Waters: Sprawling across a cactus-studded valley in Mexico’s Chihuahuan Desert is a place like no other on the planet. It’s called Cuatrocienegas, and it is a crunchy expanse of land isolated in a basin ringed by mountains like salt on the rim of a margarita glass. The seemingly dry, desert area, however, is best known for its life-giving waters–pools, wetlands and rivers filled to the brim with an amazing assortment of unique species.
In the beginning Ed Theriot’s contributions to the Assembling the Tree of Life (AToL) project—“the story of life on Earth, in a nutshell”—often begin pretty humbly. “Sometimes we go down to Waller Creek, right on campus, with a turkey baster and a toothbrush, and we suck up algae from the water and scrub it off… » Continue Reading
